The exemplary embodiment relates to the linguistic processing arts. It finds particular application in conjunction with assisting a user to develop queries for searching a structured knowledge base, such as a manual for troubleshooting of faults with electromechanical devices, and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it is to be appreciated that it is also amenable to other like applications.
Many of the devices used today, both within the workplace and outside it, are highly complex. Such devices include electromechanical devices, such as image reproduction devices, e.g., printers and photocopiers, vehicles, and audio and visual equipment, such as cameras, video recorders, cell phones, dictation devices, music systems, computing devices, such as personal computers, and the like. As computing power has increased, so the functionality of these devices has also increased. The added functionality is wasted, however, if users do not know how to use or maintain the device or are unable to locate the necessary information to do so.
When a customer observes a problem with an electromechanical device, it is advantageous for the customer to determine how to repair the device without requiring a visit from a service engineer. The customer may therefore try to troubleshoot the machine problem, for example, by following instructions on the machine, by searching for solutions in online resources, or by contacting the manufacturer's help line (e.g., by phone or email). The troubleshooting process generally requires the user to articulate the symptoms of the problem so that the likely solutions can be retrieved from the resource. However, troubleshooting systems with natural language query based user interaction usually provide efficient results only if the user has some expertise of the terminology used in the underlying knowledge base and is able to choose “good” words in the query. This leads to user frustration and abandonment of the troubleshooting process, resulting in an expensive service visit for remediation and a period in which the device is performing suboptimally.
Moreover, when the troubleshooting capabilities are embedded within a system (the place where the problem occurs), the user interaction is also constrained by the affordances of the device. In particular, a Multifunction Device (MFD), such as a device having printing, copying, and optionally fax or email capability, may not have a proper keyboard to enter a query which may make the tasks difficult, especially if this is combined with the need of having to write several iterations of the query.
There is a great deal of literature in the field of information retrieval (IR) on techniques for what is generally referred to as query expansion. This term is used to describe techniques used in vector space IR models or Boolean search engines with an OR operator, when adding more words to a query results in more results being retrieved (and may also improve the ranking). These techniques involve supplementing the original query with additional words that are related to those originally entered by the user. The expansion may be performed interactively, where the user is asked to select relevant words or documents, or automatically, where the system expands the query “behind the scenes.” Such systems still suffer when there is a mismatch between the user's terminology and that of the information being searched.